Wild Strawberries
by Signy1
Summary: Nothing happens in a vacuum, and there's usually a story behind even such oddities as the world's least appetizing-sounding baked goods. Stories can explain a lot, if you listen carefully enough, and Mary Ann discovers a bit more than she might have expected while she and a friend wait for a pie to cool.


Mary Ann put the pie on the table to cool, and without looking, picked up a fork and held it out behind her. She was not surprised when an eager hand took it.

"You'll have to wait a few minutes, Gilligan," she said. "You'll burn your mouth otherwise."

"It would be worth it," he said cheerfully. "You make the best pies in the world."

She smiled, turned to face him. "Well, that's sweet of you, but I'm not so sure about this one. Coconut, papaya, and _tuna fish_? Are you sure that's what you wanted?"

"Sure I'm sure! You've got to try some. You'll love it."

Mary Ann made a face. "I think I'll stick with banana cream, thanks anyway. I don't think you're going to have any competition for this pie—no one else would touch it with a ten foot pole."

"Their loss," he said, taking an appreciative sniff. "Mmmm. It smells great."

"Okay, I promised myself I wasn't going to ask, but I have to. How did you ever happen to try this crazy combination in the first place? You can't tell me that they serve this in Hawaii. Or _anywhere_ , for that matter. I really doubt anyone sells chocolate covered hamburgers, either."

He pushed his hat back, looking a bit sheepish. "Well, that's kind of a long story…"

"Then by the time you're done, it'll probably be cool enough to eat," Mary Ann said lightly.

"Okay," he began, and sat down on the bench. "It started when I was a kid. There was this really tough fellow who lived in my neighborhood. Kevin McElroy. He was the biggest guy in the class. Looked like Frankenstein's monster, except for the neck bolts, and was about twice as mean. Anyway, he was a real bully, and every day he'd steal my lunch."

"Oh, that's terrible!"

"Yeah, he was a real jerk. It wasn't just me he went after, either. _Everyone_ was scared of him. I heard a rumor that he beat up the principal once and that was why he never got in trouble, but that might be just a story. Anyway, I wasn't dumb enough to try fighting him, but I wanted to eat some lunch too, you know? It's a long time from breakfast to dinner. So instead of regular stuff, I started bringing all sorts of crazy sandwiches. Peanut butter and ketchup, or creamed spinach and jelly, or ham and cheese with chocolate syrup. Anything I could find in the refrigerator that sounded like they'd be awful together. So if he was going to steal it, at least he wouldn't _like_ it, and so there."

Involuntarily, she made a face, imagining what those sandwiches must have tasted like.

He just grinned. "After a while, he'd come by and check to see what I had, and if it sounded bad enough, he'd stand there and make me eat it myself. So no matter what, I sort of won, because either I got to eat something, or at least I got to make him sick. I got used to all kinds of nutty combinations that way. Then after a while, I started to like them for real. But I'm _still_ probably the only guy in the history of the Navy who walked into boot camp and thought the food looked better than what I ate at home."

Mary Ann smiled at that. It was certainly a creative way of dealing with a bully. And it did explain papaya-tuna pie. "You showed him, that's for sure!"

"No, no—I haven't even gotten to the best part yet! See, for a while, it was almost like a show for the rest of the class; we'd all file into the cafeteria, I'd open up my lunch bag and pull out something horrible, and everyone would watch to see what was going to happen. But it always ended the same way, and Kevin started getting bored with the whole thing. Then, after a few months, when it looked like it was safe, I brought something normal."

Mary Ann raised an expectant eyebrow; she could recognize a trap when she heard one.

"I still remember it like it was yesterday: plain bologna on white bread, chocolate chip cookies, and a thermos of Kool-ade. Nothing strange about that, right? And he just got this big mean grin like he'd finally worn me down, and he reached over and he grabbed the thermos right out of my hand and took this huge drink. And then he just dropped it, and he choked, and he started to cry. Is it cool yet?"

"No. Why on earth did he start _crying_?"

He snickered, still amused all these years later. "Well, either he'd just that minute figured out that bullying was wrong and he was real sorry for being such a goon, or he didn't like Kool-ade that had been mixed with about a pint and a half of Tabasco sauce, I don't know which. The teacher had to practically carry him to the nurse's office. But the whole school was laughing at him— I mean, getting outsmarted by _me_? And crying in front of everybody? He was finished after that. Done and dusted. The other kids called him 'Kool-ade-Kevin' until the day he graduated high school, and probably after."

By this time, Mary Ann was laughing so hard that tears were coming out of her own eyes. Gilligan looked smug for a moment longer, then laughed too.

"Oh, my," Mary Ann gasped, when she could breathe again. "That's wonderful. But then what happened?"

He shrugged. "Nothing much. He and a couple of his friends were waiting on the way home from school and pounded the snot out of me. But I'd still won, and the whole school knew it. And anyway, I figure if you're going to get shellacked either way, you might as well do it on a full stomach, and you _definitely_ might as well deserve it, right?"

"I guess. 'Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,' my aunt always used to say," Mary Ann said, a bit sobered by the epilogue.

"Oh, did you have sheep on your farm? They always look so soft and cuddly."

"No, we didn't—Don't," she said, suddenly upset with herself for using the past tense. "I mean, we _don't_ have sheep. At least, there weren't any when I left, and I can't imagine that they… We've been here for a long time, but still… I mean…"

"Hey. Hey, Mary Ann," Gilligan said. "Don't worry. It's okay. Everything's going to be all right, I'm positive it will. And you don't have to have sheep if you don't want them."

The incipient tears stinging the corners of her eyes weren't from laughter any more. "I know I shouldn't, but I get so discouraged. Sometimes it feels like we're going to be stuck here forever. I just want to go home!"

He cleared his throat nervously. "Um… Mary Ann? Can I tell you another story?"

She swallowed the lump in her own throat that was threatening to turn into a full-scale crying jag, and pulled herself together. "Of course, Gilligan," she said, expecting nothing more than another farfetched childhood adventure. But she told herself that it was sweet that he was trying to cheer her up, and she managed a smile. "What is it?"

"Skipper told me this one," he began. "There was this guy, and he was being chased by a ferocious tiger, but as he was running away, I guess he wasn't looking where he was going, because he fell off a cliff. But he caught himself on a branch halfway down, just like Lord Beasley that time, remember? Except with tigers, not butterflies. Butterflies aren't even ferocious. Anyway, he's hanging onto that branch, and he looks up, but it's no good. There's nothing he can use to save himself, no other branches or anything, so he can't climb back up, and anyway, he sees the tiger's still up there waiting for him and licking his chops. So he looks down, and there's no way for him to climb down, either. And there's another tiger down there, too, and he looks just as hungry as the first one does. And the branch he's hanging on starts to crack." He stopped.

Mary Ann waited for him to continue. When he didn't, she asked, "And then what happened?"

"Well, right next to where he was hanging, there was a strawberry plant, and it was full of berries. So he ate them, and they were delicious." He leaned in a bit, looked her square in the eye. There was a calm sort of assurance in his voice that she wasn't used to hearing there, and the elfin innocence that usually dominated his face was transmuted into something older, stronger. "I know this isn't where anyone wanted to be, and I don't know when we'll get home. I'm not going to lie to you; it's scary. But you can't let yourself give into that. So, just… eat the strawberries, Mary Ann. That's all any of us can do for right now. It's all we've got. One day at a time. Eat the strawberries."

As a young girl, back in Kansas, Mary Ann had once fallen out of the hayloft. She remembered it vividly; the terror as she felt herself losing her footing, followed by a strange calm while she was actually falling, and the shock of landing safely in a pile of hay, unhurt. She hadn't gotten so much as a bruise from her little adventure, and she had immediately wanted to run back up and do it again, except this time there would be no reason to fear.

She wanted to pretend that she had no idea why she had suddenly remembered the incident. But she met his steady gaze, and it was just like that moment of free fall all over again. Something bigger than her—something bigger than _anyone_ —had her, and without knowing how or why, she knew not to be afraid, that she'd land safely.

And just like that moment in the hay barn, it was over in a split second. She wasn't sure which of them was the first to look away, but somehow the moment had passed, and the world had snapped back to normal. To almost normal. "Well," she said briskly, then stopped, not sure where to go from there.

"I think that pie should be cool enough to eat now," Gilligan said, just as briskly. Just as uncertainly. "Come on. Give it a try. It sounds crazy, I know, but I bet you'll like it if you don't think about it too hard."

Yes, that would do. She wouldn't think about it too hard. "Oh, all right. Why not," she said, and smiled at him.

He grinned back at her, then took a knife and fork and carefully sliced the still-warm pie in half. Skillfully transferring one section onto a clean plate, he slid it in front of her.

She took a tentative nibble at her half as he—anything but tentatively—dove into his own portion. And to her complete and utter amazement, he was right. It _was_ good. The chunks of tuna didn't taste 'fishy' in the least; they simply gave some grounding to the sweet sharpness of the tropical fruits, and the counterbalance of textures was both intriguing and delightful. Her second bite was not tentative at all, and neither was her third.

So that was coconut-papaya-tuna pie. It sounded like a terrible combination, if you looked at it from the outside. In fact, it sounded more than terrible; it sounded sickening, disastrous, a bit mad, and all in all, it sounded like something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. But if it came to that, so did shipwrecks. And so did being marooned with six total strangers, half a world away from home. And, frankly, so did shy young sailors with two left feet and a tendency to ramble.

But then again, nothing was ever quite as simple as it seemed on the surface, or from a cursory glance at the ingredients. Sometimes, when you fell into the unknown, there was something there to catch you, and you would land safely, unhurt… and tempted to go back and do it again. And, tigers or no tigers, the strawberries could be delicious. If you let them be.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Author's note: The truly nauseating-sounding coconut-papaya-tuna pie was mentioned in 'Seer Gilligan,' and I'm just grateful that they didn't film the poor actors trying to eat it. This seemed like as logical way as any to explain the sheer weirdness of that combination... but believe me, I have no intention of trying to bake one myself to find out whether or not it really is as good as described here. If any of you do so, on your own heads be it; don't blame _me_ for any culinary disasters that might ensue. The 'Tiger and the Strawberry' story is a fairly famous Buddhist koan, and don't ask me where the Skipper might have picked up this bit of Zen philosophy, because I don't know. But shipwrecked or not, here's to all of us who are doing our level best to enjoy the strawberries as we dangle from that branch.


End file.
